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Monday, 12 September 2011

JAPANESE COMEDY SUBS: TUTORIAL - CHIRIN CHIRIN (BIKE BELL)

Hey there! How's life?

I thought I might try out subbing different kinds of videos rather than just ones with musicians or actors for a change. I'm a big fan of Japanese comedy so I'd like start to occasionally sub short conto's (comedy sketches) and manzai clips that I like. Depending on popularity it I may do it more frequently but we'll see how things go.

The first clip I've subtitled is material by the manzai unit 'Tutorial'. It consists of Tokui (the guy on the left) and Fukuda (on the right). ( If you want a short profile of them, visit Owarai Hive, a blog focused solely on Japanese comedy and join it if you find this interesting). They're one of the most famous comedians in Japan of recent years, and also host the show 'Shabekuri 007' which is another show I've subbed before.

The Japanese Manzai style of comedy is quite simple, and consists of a 'boke' (the fool) and the 'tsukkomi' (Straight man). It's basically consists of the fool doing/saying something stupid and straightman correcting him. There's also usually a lot of head smacking towards the fool so don't be shocked or alarmed about him/her getting abused. It's supposed to be like that lol.

This group doesn't smack each other that much though, so even if you don't like violence you can still watch it ;p

TRANSLATION NOTES

CICADA CHORUS
This is mainly for people who might be studying Japanese and are interested in random Japanese words that don't exist in English. In the video there was a phrase "It was a really hot summer...As the cicadas loudly chorused.....blah". What I translated as cicada's chorusing was 'Semi Shigure' 蝉時雨. 'Semi' 蝉= Cicada, whereas 'Shigure' 時雨 is a light drizzle of rain that is common in Autumn and Winter. 'Semi Shigure' is combined to create a word to describe a continuous and loud kind crying noise of cicadas in the background. I suppose people thought it resembled the noise of the light drizzles.

YAMAZAKI MASAYOSHI
There was a part where Tokui says that he searched "The back streets of town, the instersections and even the train station platforms. Even though there's no way it would be there". As Fukuda pointed out, it copied the lyrics from a famous song by Yamazaki Masayoshi called 'One more time, One more chance'. There's an english subbed version on youtube (courtesy of domolela) so I posted it here. There's a heavy metal song at the start for a bit but don't worry, it's nothing like that. It was also a song used in the anime film 'Byousoku 5cm' (5cm per second) by Makoto Shinkai.

LEGS BECAME STICKS
There's a way of saying that you used your legs a lot that they'd become stiff as sticks in Japanese.........Oh wait they also do in English....I just said it.